Senior design team Eliese Ottinger, Kaveena Patel, Islay Van Dusen, and Alejandro Medina Mora, advised by Erica Gralla, along with WMATA's Adam Jachimowicz and senior design professors Joost Santos and Eric Dano, presented their project to leaders at the Washington metro system: the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). They also won the Best Paper Award for the Decision Analysis Track at the 2023 IEEE Systems and Information Engineering Design Symposium! They developed a simulation to help WMATA determine the best locations for emergency response personnel, in order to minimize response times throughout the sprawling metro system. The model relies on historical emergency incident data and traffic information to project response times from various locations, and demonstrates the potential for significant response time improvements by relocating or adding new response bases.
